Dancing With the Virgins (40 page)

*

Cooper went upstairs to look at the bedrooms. The
rooms smelled musty, and it was obvious Owen didn't
do much cleaning, or even open the windows very often. One room contained a double bed. Cooper remembered that Owen had looked after his mother until she died, aged ninety. Her room was still as it
must have been just after her death — the sympathy
cards still on the window ledge, the tea tray next to the
bed, even the bed itself unmade, as if the old lady had only just got up. The smells of this room were familiar
to Cooper. They were redolent of the worst periods of
his own mother's illness, the schizophrenia that had thrown the Coopers' lives into chaos in the past two years
.

He drew the curtain back a few inches, loosening a
shower of dust. He was startled by a small explosion and a burst of coloured light above the neighbouring houses. Then he remembered it was the weekend for official village bonfires. He had passed the site of the
Cargreave bonfire on his way into the village. The mere
sight of the enormous heap of branches and old doors
had brought back to him all the familiar smells of the
Guy Fawkes nights of his youth — the black stink of the
gunpowder and scorched fireworks cases, the stab of
woodsmoke on the back of the throat, the scent of
trampled grass, the hotdog stands and baked potato
stalls. His mouth had begun to water at imaginary wafts
of fried onions and melted cheese mingling with the sharpness of a November frost
.

Presumably there would be plenty more fireworks
later on. But there would be no stuffed Guy Fawkes on
the bonfire this year. No one considered it acceptable
to burn Catholics in effigy these days, not even in Derbyshire
.

Cooper looked in the smaller bedroom, but found it
was jammed full with old furniture and boxes of books.
The frame of a single bed was hidden under there some
where, but there was no way of getting to it. He looked
along the landing. There was only a bathroom and a small airing cupboard left
.

He went back to the first bedroom again. It was dark
and stuffy, like a sick room. Cooper wanted to yank
back the curtains and let the light in, but he imagined
the whole thing would wither and crumble to dust
when the sunlight touched it. He had just realized why
the bed was unmade. Owen had been sleeping in it himself
.

Though the detective was still downstairs and a constable was on the door, the forensic team had
already moved on from the cottage in Cargreave. They
had left to search the Ranger centre at Partridge Cross,
where Owen Fox spent so much of his time. Later, they would carry away papers from his desk, along
with a spare pair of boots, a rucksack, and a waste-paper
bin.

‘
What sort of cigarettes do you smoke?' DCI Tailby asked the Ranger in the interview room.

‘
I don't,' said Owen.

‘
Just a crafty one now and then, is it? Maybe you're
not supposed to smoke in the briefing centre?
’

‘
I don't smoke.'

‘
Really? Do you know your jacket smells of smoke?
’

‘
No.'

‘
Well, it does.
’

Owen looked pained. 'I don't smoke.'

‘
We know about your record, Owen,' said Tailby.
'You've got a bit of a temper, haven't you? You take it
out on women sometimes. No doubt cigarettes help you
to keep calm.'

‘
I don't smoke.'

‘
We'll see.'

‘
I don't know what you mean.'

‘
Which of your colleagues smoke? The other Rangers?
’

‘
None that I know of. They like to stay fit. It's no
good being short of breath if you have to walk up
hills.'

‘
What about visitors? Do you let them smoke in the
centre?'

‘
No, it's a no-smoking zone.
’

Tailby let the tapes run for a few seconds and glanced
at Diane Fry across the table.

‘
So how do you explain the cigarette ash in the bin
in your office?' she said
.

Owen looked baffled. 'I've no idea.'

‘
I mean the waste-paper bin.'

‘
I've still no idea.'

‘
Do you recognize this rucksack?' Tailby produced
the item in a sealed plastic bag. It was a blue Berghaus
with green webbing shoulder straps.

‘
Yes, it's one of mine,' said Owen.

‘
This rucksack was recovered from the briefing centre.
Can you explain the ash and the cigarette end we found
at the bottom of it?
’

Tailby saw the Ranger hesitate. The DCI kept his face
composed, careful not to make the Ranger aware of the importance of the question. He set the reaction aside to
come back to later.

‘
No, I can't,' said Owen.

‘
As well as the waste-paper bin, and the rucksack,
our forensics people found cigarette ends at the scene of
Jenny Weston's murder. All the same make of cigarettes.
That's a lot of evidence of smoking, Mr Fox. For some
one who doesn't smoke.
’

Owen shook his head. 'I can't help you.'

‘
I suppose,' said Tailby, after a pause, 'there must be
a lot of stress in your job now and then.'

‘
Oh yes.'

‘
Is there anything that's stressed you out particularly
that you can think of ?
’

Owen seemed to turn inwards, his eyes becoming
distant. 'You mean like Cargreave Festival Day,' he said.
'Do you know about that? I think about Festival Day
all the time.'

‘
Tell us,' said Tailby.

‘
It was in all the papers. Pages and pages of it.
’

‘
Tell us anyway.
’

Owen stroked his beard nervously. He looked like aman who ought to be pale and afraid of the light. And
perhaps he would have been, too, if it weren't for the
job; it kept him out of doors, up on the hills, exposed
to the weather. For most of the time.

‘
I think one of the worst things was the crowd. All these people just stood there watching as the bodies fell and broke on the rocks. Three of them, one after another.
’

Tailby glanced at the triple tape decks as the Ranger's
voice faded, wondering whether they would pick up
the words that had become almost a whisper. But Fox
rallied again as he looked at the detectives.

‘
There was counselling by then, of course. But it depends what kind of person you are, how you deal
with that sort of thing. Sometimes, you can't deal with
it at all.
’

Tailby leaned forward. 'All right. I understand. And
the woman you were convicted of attacking, Owen?
Was that something else you just couldn't deal with?
’

Owen gazed at Tailby directly for the first time in the
past ten minutes.

‘
That was different,' he said. 'That was about sex.
’

*

Back in Cargreave, the detective from DI Armstrong's team had accessed the temporary internet files down
loaded on to Owen's PC to track the sites that he had visited. It had never occurred to Owen to delete any of
the files. So it didn't take the detective long to find the
child porn
.

29

Mark Roper wasn't under arrest. But he had heard that
Owen was, and the thought was making him nervous.
He assumed that Ben Cooper had acted on what he had
told him about the dog-fighting. But gradually he was
realizing that the questions were about something else.
And when he got nervous, he got angry. He had never
learned to keep a cool head, like Owen.

‘
It's the women who are the worst,' said Mark.
'Who told you that?' asked DI Hitchens.

‘
Owen did.
’

Mark glanced at the tapes, as if feeling guilty at men
tioning Owen's name.

‘
They're so absorbed in themselves that they don't notice what they're doing. They don't notice what's going on around them,' he said.

‘
It upsets you when people litter the countryside, doesn't it, Mark?'

‘
Yes,' he said. 'They're destroying the environment. They don't understand the damage they're doing with
their rubbish. Their drinks cans and plastic bags kill
animals and birds and all sorts of small creatures. I've
seen them. I know.'

‘
And you think it's part of your job to clean up after
people?'

‘
It's part of the job of a Ranger to care for the environment.'

‘
Perhaps you sometimes take it too far, though, Mark?'
Mark looked sulky. 'Someone has to care.'

‘
Did you see Jenny Weston leave any rubbish?'

‘
I didn't see her at all. I mean, I didn't see her until
she was dead.'

‘
No, of course. What about anybody else? Did you
see anybody else that day on Ringham Moor?'
Mark shook his head.

‘
Say it aloud for the tape, please,' said Hitchens.
'No, I didn't see anybody on the moor. There was nobody.'

‘
Ah, but you're wrong there, Mark. If Jenny was
already dead when you saw her, then obviously there
was somebody.'

‘
Yes, all right. There must have been. But I didn't see
them.'

‘
I expect you're quite good at following the signs, though, aren't you, Mark?'

‘
The signs?'

‘
Signs that anybody has been around. Tracks, damage to plants, the rubbish they leave. You must have learned
to see that someone has been past that way.
’

Mark shrugged. 'It's obvious, sometimes.'

‘
And that day?' said Hitchens. 'Could you tell some
one had been on the moor?'

‘
I could see the bike tracks,' said Mark. 'A mountain
bike. But they were
hers,
weren't they?'

‘
Yes, we think so.'

‘
She'd been out to the tower and back across to the
Virgins. That was obvious. I picked some rubbish up
at the tower. I don't know if it was hers or not.'

‘
Did it annoy you that she was there?'

‘
It's private land,' said Mark. 'There's an access agreement, but there shouldn't be mountain bikes up there.
It's against the by-laws.'

‘
Would you have told Jenny Weston that? If you had
seen her alive, I mean.'

‘
Of course I would. Some people think they can just
go anywhere they like, and they can't.'

‘
Isn't there a Right to Roam Act or something now?
’

Mark snorted. 'Right to roam! Responsibilities go
with rights. But some of them have no sense of responsi
bility. They think they just have rights. And the women
are the worst.
’

Now Mark looked confused. He watched the tapes
going round. So many people seemed to do that in the
interview rooms, as if somehow they could will their words to erase themselves from the recording.

‘
Owen again?' said Hitchens
.

Mark looked stubborn. 'He talks to me a lot. He's joking most of the time.
’

Hitchens nodded. 'But can you tell when he's not?'

‘
Sometimes,' said Mark. 'Have you talked to Warren
Leach? Was I right about the dog-fighting? Is Owen involved?
’

Nobody answered him. Hitchens produced an evi
dence bag made of clear plastic, bearing a yellow label.
He showed it to Mark. 'We found these in a locker
at Partridge Cross,' he said. 'We think they're yours.
’

Inside the bag was a plastic wallet full of newspaper
cuttings and photocopies. Some of them were ageing
and yellow. They referred to incidents that had taken
place over a period of several years — rescues and acci
dents, the recovery of dead bodies from the moors, searches for missing children.

‘
They're not important,' said Mark.

‘
We checked them out with your headquarters at Bakewell. The newspaper reports don't say so, but it
seems all these incidents have one thing in common —they all involved Peak Park Rangers, and in every case
one of the Rangers was Owen Fox.'

‘
Yes. That's right.'

‘
A bit of a hero to you, is he, Mark? It might be advisable to choose your heroes more carefully in future.'

‘
Look at that one,' said Mark. He pointed at a front
page from an old
Eden Valley Times.
One story took up
the whole of the page, with several photographs of the scene of the incident and some of the people involved.
There were head-and-shoulders pictures of three young
men, and one of a team of exhausted Rangers with
rescue equipment. The three young men had died when
they had climbed a fence on Castle Hill, Cargreave, to
chase their ball towards a slope. It was a steep, convex
slope, but you couldn't tell until it was too late, when
you couldn't go back and could no longer stand upright
on the grass. The three boys had plunged into the rocky
gorge below Castle Hill in front of tourists queuing for
admission to the show cave.

‘
We know Owen Fox was one of the Rangers who recovered the bodies from the gorge,' said Hitchens.

‘
Yes. But you see those lads that were killed,' said Mark. 'One of them was my brother.
’